Chapter 20 #2
The casualties are in the cabin, wrapped in foil blankets, being tended by Tom. The yacht sank three minutes after we pulled the last person off – just slipped beneath the waves like she’d been waiting for permission.
Cal’s back at the helm, guiding us through the swells, which are calmer now that we’re heading with the current instead of against it. Bill secures equipment, moving with the automatic efficiency of a man who’s done this a thousand times.
And Jude is beside me on the deck, a blanket around his shoulders, his breathing slowly returning to normal.
He went in the water.
He could have died.
The thought keeps circling, a shark in dark water, and every time it surfaces, I have to push it back down. Not now. Later. Deal with it later, when there’s time, when there’s space, when he’s not sitting right there with salt water still dripping from his hair.
‘Brynn.’
His voice is rough. Scraped raw by cold and seawater.
‘Don’t,’ I say. ‘Whatever you’re going to say. Just … don’t.’
‘I was going to say thank you.’
‘I said don’t.’
He’s quiet for a moment. Then, so soft I almost miss it: ‘Okay.’
The harbour lights appear through the mist. Sea Salt Bay, waiting to welcome us home.
I don’t let go of his hand.
The boathouse is bright chaos – medics for the casualties, the coastguard wanting statements.
I move through it like a ghost.
Someone takes my drysuit. Someone puts a cup of tea in my hands. Someone mentions shock, about sitting down, about that was incredible, Brynn, that throw was incredible—
I don’t process any of it.
Because Jude is across the room, being checked over by a medic, and he’s looking at me. Just looking. Like I’m the only thing in focus and everything else is blur.
The medic is talking to him. He nods without breaking eye contact.
Then he’s standing. Walking toward me. The blanket is still around his shoulders and his lips are still bluish and he’s moving like every step hurts.
He stops in front of me. Close. Too close for public.
‘Take me home,’ he says.
It’s not a question.
‘Mine?’
‘Yours.’
I don’t ask why. Don’t need to.
We don’t speak on the walk to the cottage.
The rain has stopped, leaving the village washed clean and glistening under the streetlights. Our footsteps echo off the cobblestones. Somewhere, a dog barks. A light goes on in an upstairs window, then off again.
Normal sounds. Normal life. Like the world doesn’t know that everything just changed.
Jude’s hand is in mine. His fingers are still cold, still trembling slightly, but his grip is sure. Present. Here.
I keep waiting for the adrenaline to fade. For reality to reassert itself, remind me of all the reasons this is a terrible idea. The secrets I’m keeping. The lies I haven’t told. The betrayal waiting in the wings like a patient predator.
But reality stays quiet. And Jude stays warm beside me. And my key turns in the lock of my crappy cottage and we’re inside, the door closing behind us, and suddenly the world shrinks to just this room. Just us.
He’s still wearing the blanket from the boathouse. His hair is drying in stiff waves, salt-crusted and wild. There’s a bruise forming on his cheekbone – he must have hit the gunwale as he went over – and his lips are still not quite the right colour.
He’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
‘You need a hot shower,’ I say. ‘You’re hypothermic.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You’re shaking.’
‘Not from cold.’
Oh.
Oh.
‘Jude—’
‘Don’t.’ He steps closer. The blanket falls from his shoulders, pools on the floor. ‘Whatever you’re about to say. Don’t.’
‘I was going to say you almost died.’
‘I know.’
‘I was going to say this is insane.’
‘It is.’
‘I was going to say—’
‘Brynn.’ His hands come up to cup my face. His palms are rough, calloused, still carrying the cold of the Atlantic. ‘Stop talking.’
Not like that first time when it was all fury and frustration and a point to make.
Not even like earlier tonight, at the kitchen table, soft and slow and full of questions.
This is need.
His mouth on mine, desperate and sure. His hands in my hair, on my neck, sliding down to grip my waist and pull me closer. His body against mine, still cold in places, warming everywhere we touch.
I kiss him back with everything I have. Everything I’ve been holding back. All the fear from tonight, all the relief, all the terrifying want I’ve been pretending doesn’t exist.
He’s alive. He’s here. He’s mine.
The thought should scare me. It doesn’t.
We stumble toward the bedroom – more alcove than room, really, just a bed in a corner and a window that doesn’t close properly. The sheets are cold. I don’t care. He doesn’t either.
Clothes come off in pieces. His jumper, still damp. My shirt, buttons giving up without a fight. The thermal layer he was wearing under the drysuit. My jeans, caught on my ankle, kicked away impatiently.
And then skin. Finally, finally, skin.
He’s cold everywhere the water touched him. Chest, stomach, the hollow of his throat. I press my mouth to each place, trying to warm him, trying to chase away the Atlantic’s claim on his body.
‘Brynn—’ His voice breaks on my name.
‘I’ve got you,’ I whisper against his collarbone. ‘I’ve got you.’
It’s what he said to me, that first night. When everything was anger and edges and two people crashing together because they didn’t know what else to do.
This is different.
This is slow where that was fast. Tender where that was rough. His hands tracing the lines of my body like he’s memorising me, like he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he doesn’t map every inch.
When he finally slides inside me, we both go still.
Eyes open. Breath held. The whole world suspended on this single point of connection.
‘Jude.’ I don’t know what I’m asking for. Don’t know what I’m offering. Just his name, the only word that makes sense anymore.
‘I know,’ he says. ‘I know.’
He moves. I move with him. And it’s nothing like before – no desperation, no performance, no trying to prove anything to anyone. Just this. Just us. Just the slow build of what I’m terrified to call by name.
I come apart first, his name on my lips, his skin warm and slick against mine. He follows seconds later, his face buried in my neck, his whole body shuddering with the force of it.
After, we lie tangled together in my narrow bed.
The window rattles in the wind. The damp patch on the ceiling looks bigger than it did this morning. Somewhere in the village, a clock strikes midnight.
Jude’s hand traces lazy patterns on my hip.
‘I should go,’ he says, not moving.
‘Probably.’
‘My dad—’
‘I know.’
He’s quiet for a moment. His fingers still.
‘I don’t want to.’
‘I know that too.’
He shifts, propping himself up on one elbow to look at me. His face is soft in the darkness. Younger, somehow, without all the armour he wears during the day.
‘What is this?’ he asks. ‘What are we doing?’
I could lie. Could deflect with a joke, build back the walls we’ve just torn down. It’s what I do. What I’ve always done.
But he almost died tonight. And I saved him. And some things, once they happen, can’t be unhappened.
‘I don’t know,’ I admit. ‘But I don’t want to stop.’
‘Even though—’
‘Even though.’
He kisses me. Soft this time. A question and an answer all at once.
‘Stay,’ I say against his mouth. ‘Just tonight. Deal with the rest tomorrow.’
‘Your bed is terrible.’
‘I know. Dot sent it up to me, I didn’t want to tell her it was knackered.’
‘There’s a spring poking into my back.’
‘I know. Don’t tell Dot.’
‘I’m probably going to regret this.’
‘Probably.’
He smiles. I feel it against my lips.
‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Just tonight.’
We both know it’s a lie.
He wraps himself around me – arms, legs, the whole warm weight of him – and I let myself be held. Let myself breathe. Let myself, just for tonight, stop running.
Outside, the wind howls and the sea churns and Sea Salt Bay sleeps.
Inside, Jude Harding’s heart beats steady against my back.
And for the first time in as long as I can remember, I’m not afraid of what morning might bring.